The number and size of concentrated animal feeding and other agricultural operations, which produce beef, pork, poultry, elk and other game animals, goat, lamb, fish, milk, cheese, eggs and other foodstuffs produced from animals, have been steadily increasing for the past 50 years. The same is true for other animal feeding operations for sheep, mink, alpaca and other animals for production of wool, furs and other fiber products. The primary benefit of housing and feeding larger numbers of agricultural animals at a single site is that the consolidated operations give an economy of scale that lowers per unit product operating costs and improves profitability. However, as the number and size of concentrated, confined animal feeding operations has grown over the years, the development of technology to treat the waste material from these facilities has seriously lagged. The majority of the waste material is transported to sites distant from these facilities and is applied with little or no treatment to land where food crops are grown. Consequently, there are environmental and health concerns about direct application of raw or minimally treated manure to the ground, including rainwater runoff of pollutants into surface and ground waters and emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere due to bioconversion or decomposition. Disposal of manure is a significant cost to the animal feeding operation, because manure is produced in high volumes with high moisture content.
Chicken egg production in the United States has undergone significant change in recent years. Such change is characterized by growth of the producing flock, and individual producing sites have become larger. For example, it is estimated that there are currently more than 50 egg production facilities in the United States which contain a minimum of one million laying hens. Producers have been faced with the fact that egg production and processing operations must become large and more concentrated to improve economic performance in a competitive business environment. However, these major producing facilities with more than one million layers, typically do not use any type of manure processing technology, but simply apply the manure to farm ground as a method of disposal. As mentioned above, there are significant environmental concerns with this method of disposing of manure generated by the egg producing operation.
Animal manures from dairy, feed lot and hog facilities typically have a moisture content in excess of 70% by weight, which makes it difficult to handle and dispose of such manures economically. Removing moisture for volume reduction to enable landfill disposal is too costly and is environmentally undesirable. Transport to farm sites for direct disposal and use on crop land is also costly and is environmentally undesirable due to noxious odors released on application and due to the presence of contaminants, such as antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, etc., in the manure. In some cases, the application of raw or concentrated raw manure could cause plant kill in some applications due to such contaminants.
Bioconversion, commonly used for treatment of municipal sewage and livestock waste, refers to the conversion or decomposition of organic materials (such as organic waste) into useful products (such as usable feed or fuel) by bacterial decomposition of such organic matter. Bioconversion includes anaerobic and aerobic digestion. In some cases, operators of animal feeding operations have constructed lagoons and holding ponds to hold manure and to allow bioconversion digestion of the waste material before it is applied to the land. However, the condition and operation of some of these lagoons has been the subject of national news headlines, such as the breach of lagoon dikes in North Carolina, Iowa and elsewhere when flooding occurs. They also have the problems of requiring large land areas, and they have no control of emissions of noxious odors and greenhouse or polluting gases into the atmosphere.
While research by universities and government laboratories has shown that animal manure may, under certain controlled conditions, be effectively treated by anaerobic digestion, poultry and swine manure have been shown to be among the most difficult to treat. Conventional anaerobic digestion technology has certain limitations in terms of slow reaction rates (low throughput), particularly in cold climates, and the ability of the bacteria to be productive when conditions (such as pH, temperature and concentration of certain chemical constituents) in the digester are not optimum. Current literature teaches that anaerobic treatment of poultry manure can only be accomplished if the manure is diluted with water at a weight ratio of between about 4 to 1 and about 10 to 1 water to solids. While such dilution allows for better bioconversion and digestion of the manure, it also increases the volume of waste that must be handled and ultimately processed for disposal. As a result, this approach increases processing costs and is not economically desirable.
In spite of the efforts of governments and the animal feeding industry, there are no cost effective manure treatment facilities in operation that are not a significant and direct financial burden to the agricultural producer. In addition, the processes in use, such as biogas production from manure, themselves have environmental problems, such as producing a biodigested toxic sludge that must be disposed of in an acceptable manner. Therefore, new and improved methods of treating agricultural manure that overcome the technical defects and economic disadvantages of the prior art are highly desired.
A similar situation exists for municipal sewage due to rapid growth of cities and inadequate building or upgrading of sewage treatment facilities to keep up with the population growth. Aerobic digestion is commonly used for bioconversion of municipal waste, which also produces large volumes of dilute, high water, low solids, content mixtures that are costly to dispose of. In many countries a municipal sludge is produced by raising the solids content, and the resulting municipal sludge is disposed of by application to cropland. This is less common in the U.S. and Canada, and in some cases, is prohibited, so the sludge has been disposed of in landfill locations. However, due to federal, state and local government restrictions on the volume of waste permitted in landfill operations and the increasing fees for landfill disposal, the emphasis of technology in recent years has been on volume reduction of municipal waste by drying, incineration, etc., to reduce the cost of disposal of remaining solids in landfills. Incineration and pyrolysis are increasingly disfavored due to air pollution and solids disposal problems. Again, new and improved methods of treating municipal waste and sludge to overcome the technical and economic disadvantages of the prior art are highly desired.
Various rules and regulations have been developed for the purpose of sterilizing or decontaminating biological sludges, manures and wastes. In 1993 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promulgated rules for the treatment and management of municipal sewage sludge (EPA, 1993). These rules set standards for pathogen destruction (disinfection), vector attraction reduction (VAR), and metal contaminant reduction in sewage sludge. The disinfection standards are separated into two categories: Class B in which sludges are treated to partially destroy pathogens; and Class A where pathogenic bacteria, enteric viruses and helminth parasites are reduced to near detection limits.
Processes previously approved by EPA as Class A disinfection processes include: thermal treatment, based on a prescribed time-temperature relationship; advanced alkaline stabilization with accelerated drying, combining raising a pH above 12 for 72 hours, heating to greater than 125° F. for 12 hours, and producing solids greater than 50%; composting; heat drying; heat treatment of liquid sludge; thermophilic aerobic digestion; beta ray irradiation; gamma ray irradiation; pasteurization (temperature greater than 158° F. for at least 30 minutes); a combination of a pH reaching at least 12 and pasteurization; and several advanced digestion processes (EPA, 1999). Processes that purport to meet these EPA standards are costly in operation and typically do not provide satisfactory results.
Examples of the prior art and publications that have addressed the above problems by digestion, incineration, volume reduction and/or decomposition are U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,528 to Finham, U.S. Pat. No. 5,685,153 to Dickenson et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 6,039,774 to McMullen et al.; U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,125,633 and 6,173,508 to Strohmeyer; U.S. Pat. No. 6,171,499 to Bouchalat; U.S. Pat. No. 6,524,632 to Kartchner; U.S. Pat. No. 6,613,562 to Dvork; U.S. Pat. No. 6,682,578 to Sower; and U.S. Patent Application 2004/0025715 by Bonde et al., the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Another problem existing in animal feeding operations and sewage treatment is air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions, including methane and CO2, and gases having noxious odors. As residential housing areas have expanded, many have encroached on land adjacent to animal feeding operations, then complaints from residents regarding the noxious odors escalate. In addition to the odors and air polluting greenhouse gases produced from the manure and bioconversion of manure, significant quantities of the noxious and greenhouse gases are produced directly from the animals in their flatulence, burps and regurgitation. In addition to the need to control noxious and greenhouse gases emitted directly from the manure (urine and feces) or from decomposition of the manure, there is a recognized need to control the noxious and greenhouse gas emissions from the animals themselves and prevent same from being released into the atmosphere.
There is also increasing emphasis in developed countries on the production of food crops by use of certified organic crop production processes and materials. The governments of Canada, Australia, the United States, the European Union and other countries have developed standards for qualifying food products as “organic” or “organically produced,” and several certifying organizations and government agencies exist to certify farms and market produce as “organic” under the appropriate standards. The concept underpinning “organic” food and crop production is that the inputs used in crop or animal production (fertilizer, seeds, feeds, sprays, etc.) are allowed to contain only minimal levels of certain approved non-natural materials, such as synthetic chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, etc., and are allowed to contain essentially no amounts of designated undesirable materials, such as pesticides, drugs, growth hormones, pathogens, etc. The following are examples of the standards setting agencies:    CGSB—Canadian General Standards Board    Standards Council of Canada    270 Albert Street, Suite 200    Ottawa, Ontario K1P 6N7, Canada    NOSB/NOP—National Organic Standards Board/National Organics Program    U.S. Department of Agriculture    1400 Independence Avenue, SW    Washington, D.C. 20250 USA    CAAQ—Conseil des appellations agroalimentaires du Québec    35, rue de Port-Royal Est, 2ème étage    Montréal, QC, H3L 3T1 Canada    The Council of European Communities    Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat, 175    B-1048 Brussels, Belgium    IFOAM    Charles-de-Gaulle-Str. 5    53113 Bonn—Germany    CODEX Alimentarius Commission    FAO—Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations    Viale delle Terme di Caracalla    0100 Rome, Italy    FSANZ—Food Standards Australia New Zealand    Boeing House    55 Blackall Street    BARON ACT 2600    PO Box 7186    Can berra BC ACT 2610 Australia    JAS—Japan Agricultural Standards    Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries    Tokyo Center for Quality Control and Consumers Servic    Omiya City, Japan    COABC—The Certified Organic Association of British Columbia    #8-A 100 Kalamalka Lake Road    Vernon BC, V1T 9G1 Canada    OMRI—The Organic Materials Review Institute    PO box 11558    Eugene, Oreg. 97440-3758, USAThe following are examples of the organizations that have been qualified and accepted by at least one standards setting agency for certifying that specific producers/produce are in compliance with the applicable organic standards:    FVOPA—Fraser Valley Organic Producers Association    Surrey (CB), Canada    GBE Garantie Bio—Ecocert    Lėvis (Quebec), Canada    FOG—Florida Certified Organic Growers & Consumers, Inc.    Gainesville, Fla. USA    ACO—Australian Certified Organic P/L    Toowoomba, Australia    QAI—Quality Assurance International    12526 High Bluff Dr., Suite 300, San Diego, Calif. 92130 USA    OCIA International—Organic Crop Improvement Association International    6400 Cornhusker Hwy, Suite 125, Lincoln, Nebr. 68507 USA    IOAS—The International Organic Accreditation Service    118½-1st Ave., South, Suite 15, Jamestown, N. Dak. 58401 USA    ICS—International Certification Services, Inc.    301 5th Ave. SE    Medina, N. Dak. USA    ICS/FVO—International Certification Services, Inc.    Farm Verified Organic    301 5th Ave. SE    Medina, N. Dak. USA    CCOF—California Certified Organic Farmers Inc.    Santa Cruz, Calif. USA    CERTIMEX—Certificadora Mexicana de Productos y Proceso Ecologicos S.C.    Oaxaca, Mexico    IMO—Institut flir Marktokologie    Weinfelden, Switzerland    SACL—Soil Association Certification Ltd.    Bristol, United Kingdom
These standard setting organizations and agencies have been developed due to the rapidly increasing consumer demand, not only for organic products, but for some reliable standards so consumers can have confidence in the organic product labeling. Thus, the “certified organic” labeling and terminology have been developed to mean products or produce certified by recognized organizations as meeting the applicable agency standards and product or produce made by methods that meet the agency standards for organic production methods.
One essential aspect of certified organic food production is the necessity of using inputs that are certified organic, such as fertilizers, which are either approved, such as materials containing no pathogens or other disqualifying components, or regulated and accepted, such as manures, composts and the like that meet the applicable standards. Technology developed to date for producing certified organic fertilizer products has not been satisfactory due to one or more problems in product quality, environmental acceptability or economic feasibility for providing a reasonably priced commercial product. Examples of the prior art and publications that have addressed the production of organic or certified organic fertilizer products are U.S. Pat. No. 5,354,349 to Inoue; U.S. Pat. No. 6,461,399 to Connell; U.S. Pat. No. 6,517,600 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,645,267 to Dinel; U.S. Patent Applications 2003/0038078 by Stamper et al., 2003/0089151 and 2003/0136165 by Logan et al., and 2003/0111410 by Branson, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
It is apparent from the above that there is a substantial unmet need for environmentally and economically acceptable technologies for disposal of manure and sewage, for control of noxious and greenhouse gases from animal feeding operations, and for production of organic fertilizer and soil builder products that can be certified for food production inputs under established standards for certified organic food production. The present invention is directed to methods, apparatus, systems and products for meeting one or all of these needs.